Pea and Bacon Risotto

Mmmm... this pea and bacon risotto recipe is a winner.  I like how some of the peas are kept whole and some are pureed and mixed into the rice to ensure the flavor is spread throughout the dish.  Plus, the fresh, green pea flavor is complimented by the smokey, meaty bacon and the lemon juice at the end brightens it all up.  Good stuff from Food & Wine. 

Fettuccine with Peas, Asparagus, and Bacon

This pasta dish with peas, asparagus and bacon was the May Bon Appetit front cover... it looked great and tasted pretty good. Quite fast to make, light and springy. Mmm.

Turkey Tetrazzini

So this week must be retro casserole week... I feel like Betty Draper, mooning around the kitchen, cooking these old-school dishes like chicken pot pie and turkey tetrazzini. All I need is a martini and a cigarette... and maybe some big ole curlers.

Anywho: turkey tetrazzini... noodley, mushroomy, crispy-topped. Pretty good! I used ground turkey (sauteed with some shallot and garlic), Gruyere instead of Swiss, and threw some parsley into the mix before I baked it.

Tarragon Chicken Pot Pie with Gruyere Polenta Crust

I got some tarragon from the CSA last week and was looking for a way to use it up. This Rachael Ray (yeah, I know) chicken pot pie recipe looked good, and we had most of the ingredients on hand, save the quick-cooking polenta, which I sent Tim to get on his way home from work.

Unbeknownst to Tim, quick-cooking polenta is not equivalent to pre-cooked polenta, which is the stuff that comes in the tube. Oh well. It worked anyway- I just sliced up the tube of polenta, sprinkled the Gruyere on top and put the whole thing on top of the pot pie insides.

Overall, I give the flavors of this recipe 2 thumbs up. However, I think I would go about making the roux a little differently than Rachael suggests- it was very watery.

Indian Deliciousness, Take 2: Chicken Tikka Masala and Cauliflower Curry

After my last foray into Indian (which was mostly successful), I was watching TV and happened upon an episode of America's Test Kitchen on PBS in which they were making Indian food. I looked up their recipes online to see if they might be the magic bullet. Their method seemed pretty easy, and I know they obsessively test their recipes repeatedly, so I thought they had potential.

With cauliflower and potatoes from the CSA this week, I thought this was a good time. Plus, I could tell Tony wanted to bust out some of the Bollywood dance moves he learned from last week's Psych episode (which, funnily, featured Madhur Jaffrey, a famous cookbook writer who specializes in Indian and vegetarian).

The chicken tikka masala was really good- marinating the chicken in a yogurt mixture and then cooking it separately from the sauce made it really juicy. The veggie curry was good, too! My hands definitely still smell like the curry spices now, though, 4 hours later. Such is the price for a tasty dinner.